WATCH: Mick Mulvaney, Pressed By Chuck Todd, Admits He’d Make ‘Political Hay’ if 2012 Hillary Gave a Convention Speech Like Pompeo

NBC’s Chuck Todd put former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney through a sustained round of questions Wednesday over the alleged Hatch Act violations that have taken place at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Between Mike Pompeo’s speech from Israel, the use of federal property, and the RNC’s airing of Trump wielding his presidential powers, critics have accused the convention of flouting the Hatch Act’s prohibition on federal employees using their official capacities to exert influence over an election. Todd raised the issue as he noted that Mulvaney previously stopped Trump from doing certain things out of concern for the Hatch Act, but now the president seems to be outright mocking it.

Mulvaney insisted that the Trump administration acknowledges the Hatch Act and works with the White House Counsel’s Office to comply with it.

“I’m absolutely sure…that the White House Counsel’s Office and probably even the Department of Justice has weighed in on this and they know it is entirely legal,” he said. “The bottom line is it is highly unlikely the president is doing this without full sign-off from every lawyer in the White House and probably the Department of Justice.”

From there, Todd referred back to Pompeo’s speech and presented Mulvaney with a hypothetical:

What would Congressman Mulvaney have said if Hillary Clinton had spoken from the rooftop of the King David Hotel as sitting secretary of state at the 2012 convention?

Todd hypothesized that Mulvaney would’ve been “pretty critical,” and Mulvaney countered by arguing that Pompeo wasn’t acting in his official capacity.

“You’re not a federal employee 24 hours a day,” Mulvaney said. “I am allowed to express my First Amendment rights. Would I have made some political hay out of it? Probably, because that is the business we’re in, but at the end of the day if the analysis is ‘is it legal or illegal’…it’s probably a hundred percent legal.”

The conversation went on with Todd and Mulvaney debating the “spirit” of the Hatch Act, whether it’s actually enforceable, and whether Pompeo went “off-message” since the State Department recently advised its employees not to engage in partisan activities.

Earlier in the day, Mulvaney’s successor Mark Meadows shrugged off Hatch Act-related criticisms for the RNC, arguing that “nobody” outside of Washington cares.

Watch above, via MSNBC.